The starting point as an animator

Q01: How did you get into the animation industry?

Specifically, I first decided to work in anime when I was a junior high student. After graduation, I went to talk to studios. Of course, a teacher tried to stop me. (Laughs) I wanted to go to Toei studio, and I remember being told, “You can’t eat as an animator.”

When I graduated from high school it got a little more real, and I got a desk job. But I still felt that I wanted to get a job in anime. A friend of mine who liked anime knew a guy who came and went to a studio, and I started to get part-time work on animation he was doing. When I look back on it, I’m shocked to realize that I was doing key animation.

Then I met the animator Masahito Yamashita, who was working on Urusei Yatsura at the time. He told me, “If you like it that much, you should go into a studio. If you don’t, you’ll probably regret it.” That was the opportunity that got me into the anime industry.

Q02: Why did you choose to start your career at Artland studio?

You’d think I’d want to start at the studio Mr. Yamashita recommended, right? But for some reason, I thought I wanted to relearn everything from the beginning at another studio. So, in order to dive in, I made a list of studios and one that looked particularly bright was Artland, which had just finished production of Macross.

Noboru Ishiguro [Yamato’s first supervising director] was the representative who picked me up. When I showed him the key art I’d done in my part-time job, he liked it and asked, “Would you like to do key animation?” I had chosen a studio with the intention of going back to the beginning, so wouldn’t it be awkward to suddenly be drawing key animation? But Mr. Ishiguro said, “I don’t care about that.”

That was certainly the time of Macross and Hideaki Anno, when people who were college students went to work in studios during summer vacation, and when I settled in and took a look around, it seemed to be common for them to be drawing key animation. I guess the stance was that if you could do it, Mr. Ishiguro would give you a hot job regardless of where you were in your career.

However, Mr. Ishiguro was an unusual person, and I was worried about my age. I thought, “I’m a little too young to be in charge of key animation at the age of 20.” I was born in 1961 and for some reason I decided that I had to be 21. (Laughs) Though I still don’t know what the rationale was behind just one year’s difference.

This hung over me like a curse. Isn’t everyone who was born in 1961 treated as the same generation? I was always apologizing in my heart, “I’m sorry…I’m actually one year younger…” (Laughs) I wonder if some people still think that I was born before 1961.

At the time, I thought Mr. Ishiguro was a really unusual person. Now I think that people who have such unusual thoughts are better suited for the anime world, more or less.

Q03: What was your impression when your own art became anime for the first time?

Properly speaking, Super Dimension Century Orguss (1983) was supposed to be my debut work in terms of key animation, but as I said, I was working at a part-time anime job before I entered Artland. So the first time I saw my art moving on TV was before Orguss.

What was the name of the work? I can’t say, even if my mouth is torn off. (Laughs) It’s a black mark in my history. (Sweat) However, no matter how bad the picture was, I thought that anime was amazing. To some extent, the in-betweens amid my key animation seemed to work properly. The quality of the timing was another story, but it moved and it seemed to work. So when I first saw my art on TV, the impression was strange. “Ah, it works okay.” That sort of thing.

[See Mr. Yuuki’s credit list at Anime News Network here. The only title on the list with the correct vintage to be the “black mark” is this one, but no guarantees.]

Q04: How old were you when you started drawing, and what kind of drawings did you do back then?

I don’t really remember how old I was. (Laughs) When I noticed it, I felt like I was drawing a masterpiece. Every child draws, don’t they? While drawing trains, drawing flowers, and all the things I liked, I was drawing anime from the beginning. I remember learning from the black and white Tetsujin 28 and Gegege no Kitaro. My mother and grandmother gave me a lot of praise, so I got comfortable with it. From that point on, I started to draw like crazy.

Q05: When you aimed for the anime industry, did you study art professionally?

I didn’t do that at all. If I wanted to work in anime or manga, I had to study art in high school. I thought I’d join the fine arts club, but that didn’t last long.

Somehow the teaching advisor changed it around to where I was doing oil paintings, and I would have to draw over older peoples’ art for some reason.

There once was such a technique, and in that case I would have to properly undercoat it and erase the original picture to some extent. But it didn’t work out at all. No matter how much I drew over it, I could see through to the picture beneath. Didn’t that feel like a wasted effort? What was I doing? That’s all it was. (Laughs) I quit because I didn’t think I would fit in.

After I started working, I taught myself with reference books such as artist’s anatomy. Since I didn’t get a specialized education, it was still complex after all. There were a lot of recent art school graduates among the animators, and even if that wasn’t the case there were still many people who eagerly did study sketches.

Q06: What artists and works influenced you as a creator?

I’ve been feeling that again recently. Fundamentally, I think it’s Go Nagai. His work touched my generation when we were in elementary school, and as you can expect it had a huge influence.

After that came the anime boom and the world of manga changed greatly. There were a lot of influences, but nothing could top Go Nagai. Even if I did do oil paintings in the art club, his influence would have come out. I’m not conscious of it at all when I’m drawing, but if I look back at it later I think I’m often influenced by it.

The appeal of his work is that, in addition to the patterns and designs, there is his style. I think it’s most attractive in its rougher places. Some fans may see something similar to that in my style, but it may not be prominent. Especially when making original works, I like something that’s sort of tacky in a good way. In the end, that’s Go Nagai’s influence.

Q07: What artists or works influenced you in genres other than anime and manga?

I’ve often said this in other interviews, but outside of anime and manga I especially like horror writer Stephen King. And I’ve especially liked Phillip K. Dick since I started reading foreign SF as a student. When it comes to movies, I often see zombie things. I don’t generally like B-movies or splatter movies, but I especially like works that depict the actions and choices of human beings in extreme conditions, such as George Romero’s work. Come to think of it, that’s not limited to zombie things, but also pandemic things. Go Nagai’s work also contains such elements.

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